John McCain poised to become White House front-runner

John McCain's White House prospects have undergone such a dramatic turnaround
that he is a whisker away from a title with which he has always seemed
distinctly uncomfortable - front runner.

John McCain's unexpected poll surge has taken aback even his closest advisersPhoto: AP

By Toby Harnden in Washington

7:19PM BST 20 Aug 2008

A Reuters-Zogby poll released on Wednesday found the Republican senator leading Barack Obama among likely voters by 46 to 41 per cent, sweeping away a seven-point advantage the Illinois senator held in the same survey a month ago.

At the same time, a Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg poll that gave Mr Obama a 12-point lead in June found that the two candidates were statistically tied. Race continues to be a significant factor with nine per cent of voters saying they would feel uncomfortable voting for a black candidate.

Mr McCain's unexpected poll surge has taken aback even his closest advisers. It could trigger a modification of his strategy in the two months after the party convention and before polling day. The RealClearPolitics average of polls has him trailing by less than two per cent.

Although Mr Obama still has a major financial advantage, more enthusiastic supporters, a wider grassroots campaign network and a broader political climate that favours any Democrat, doubts about him seem to be increasing.

Some Republicans now argue that rather than having to take risks, such as unveiling a startling choice for vice-presidential running mate, he can afford a steadier approach, putting pressure on Mr Obama so that he is more likely to make mistakes.

"We shouldn't be in this position right now," said a McCain aide, who sounded a note of caution. "We should be down by double digits so we are definitely outperforming.

"It's always nice to be up in the polls but Obama's surely going to have a great convention and a post-convention poll bounce can be anything from 10 to 15 points so we're not popping the champagne."

The aide confided that when he joined the McCain campaign he had done so with a degree of fatalism that no Republican could win in 2008. A fortnight or so ago, however, he began to believe that "we could just do this thing".

Democrats played down the significance of the Reuters-Zogby poll. "You can tell any story you want to about this race at any point in it," said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster. The natural state of the race is to be a referendum on Bush and McCain.

"McCain wants it to be a referendum on Barack Obama, who has become the centre of the national debate for several weeks. The Obama people are working mightily to change that around."

Before learning of the Reuters-Zogby poll, Mr Mellman said that Mr Obama had a narrow but consistent lead of a few percentage points. "You never find a poll saying McCain is ahead." When informed of the Reuters-Zogby poll, he laughed and said: "I think it's a typical Zogby outlier."

The early favourite to become the Republican nominee, Mr McCain, who ran as the underdog against George W. Bush in 2000, never seemed at ease with being his party's front runner.

His primary campaign imploded last July and he became a rank outsider before eventually prevailing over Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.

Mr McCain's change in fortunes comes after a month in which he turned sharply negative, portraying Mr Obama as a vacuous, self-obsessed candidate with no experience and a confidence bordering on messianic self-belief. One hugely successful advertisement compared him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

Among Republican strategists there is a palpable sense of confidence for the first time since Mr Obama, 47, overcame Hillary Clinton after their bruising primary battle. The two candidates appeared at the same religious forum at Saddleback Church in California on Saturday with Mr McCain, who turns 72 this month, widely seen as the more assured.

Afterwards, the Obama campaign complained that Mr McCain had cheated, accusing him of gaining an advantage by listening to Mr Obama's session beforehand. The charge, flatly rejected by the McCain campaign, indicated that the Democrat's advisers were rattled.

"A lot of what has happened was summed up at Saddleback," said Alex Castellanos, a veteran Republican advertising operative providing "volunteer counsel" to the McCain campaign.

We saw McCain as a well-formed, complete man who doesn't have to fumble around to find out who he is and what's important to him.

"Obama seemed very bright but not sure what he believes in. He had to engineer his way mentally through his answers - they did not spring from a well of life experience. It was the Barack Obama experiment, as if he was growing up and completing himself before our eyes."

The whole calculus of the campaign had now changed, he argued. "People thought that Obama was the front runner and this campaign was going to be about John McCain tearing Obama down, defining him and bringing him within reach.

"McCain has been effective in doing that earlier than people thought.

Now it's going to be about Barack Obama bringing down John McCain and seeing how negative he will go. That's tough because he's a war hero and a man of character that America's not unfamiliar with."

The media, Mr Castellanos added, would be reluctant to anoint Mr McCain the front runner because the environment, with an unpopular Republican president, an ailing economy and the Iraq war, is so favourable to Democrats. But this might suit the former Vietnam prisoner of war.

"He's the fighter, the maverick and mavericks are always the uphill warriors. It its his campaigning style."